In early June, Land Rover launched a campaign themed, "The New Rush" to promote the launch of the car company's new Range Rover Sport. It incorporated a website virtual cityscape along with outdoor. To attract attention to the campaign, Land Rover had a soft drink, called, appropriately, "The New Rush," made and distributed to the media and other promotional channels. It's tasty "concoction of B vitamins, caffeine, water and fruit flavors" and it's better than most soft drinks available at retail. The Adrants offices received our flat of the drink and we're lovin' it. Oh, wait. That's McDonald's. Sorry, Land Rover. We're....uh...rushin' it. Yea, that's it. Thanks.

McDonald's is doing the Neopets thing again. Beginning July 8 and running until August 4, 2005, twelve Neopets species from Netopis will be placed in McDonald's Happy Meals and Mighty Kids Meals. This is the second annual Neopets promotion with McDonald's.

Neopets is the online youth community where members can "explore new worlds, play games, enter contests, and interact with each other in an entertainment environment." The McDonald's Neopets Happy Meal and Mighty Kids Meal collection has twelve new species of Neopets in seven different colors. Each Neopet that comes with a McDonald's Happy Meal features a virtual prize code, which can be entered online in exchange for prizes, such as "fuzzy slippers" or Neopoints. Each Neopet also includes a "Petpet" clip.

While it's safe to say this isn't a sanctioned Hanes promotion, we're quite sure this visual, and the others that go with it, will be seen by far more people and get much more mileage than your typical Hanes ad.

Crashing the swelling corporate graffiti party, Nike has teamed with graffiti writer, Futura, to create a series of symbols and icons that illustrate Lance Armstrong's personality and challenging life story. The images were then reproduced on Lance's Tour De France time trial bike. A website ties it all together and promotes Armstrong's new line called 10/2 which is the date that he was diagnosed with testicular cancer

Big, bad, biker Bucky comments, "With the rising popularity of bicycling and Lance himself, I think it's really cool that NIKE would hire an underground celeb like Futura to work on a project like this." And now, the comment section eagerly awaits the wrath of graffiti purists.

New Line Cinema, like every other movie distributor has a website promoting its upcoming movies. But, for the release of its Owen Wilson/Vince Vaughn comedy, Wedding Crashers, New Line has added a twist and created a section of the movie's website where visitors can "crash" the movie trailer. Visitors who enter their name, a friend's name and their head shots will appear atop the bodies of their characters in a "re-cut" version of three minute online trailer. Once the "re-cut" trailer has been completed, people will want it to be seen so, of course, they'll send it out to their friends. It's a very simple, yet ingenious way to get the movie's site spread virally.

Apparently, Nike has taken, without permission, the 1984 album design of Dischord Records artist Minor Threat and turned it into a skateboarding poster for the company's "Major Threat" East Coast Tour. When asked by Pitchfork Media if Nike had obtained permission to mirror the art, Dischord Records said, "No, they stole it and we're not happy about it. Nike is a giant corporation which is attempting to manipulate the alternative skate culture to create an even wider demand for their already ubiquitous brand. Nike represents just about the antithesis of what Dischord stands for and it makes me sick to my stomach to think they are using this explicit imagery to fool kids into thinking that the general ethos of this label, and Minor Threat in particular, can somehow be linked to Nike's mission. It's disgusting."

According to nightlife czar Bucky Turco, it's best to stick to proven promotional tactics rather than yield to the pressures of political correctness. At the Marc Ecko charity event for Breast Cancer Turco attended last night, servers where sampling Evian and Floot, a new, wine/champagne-in-a-can drink. Per usual, most of the servers were attractive females except for one Floot server. Noticing this, Turco commented, "Women dolled up and serving is cute and cool and acceptable. But the minute you dress a dude up you're headed for disaster."

Turco said the women all looked fine but said, "The guy, all dressed in yellow with a gold belt look like he just died and descended back from Gay Hipster Heaven. The accessories especially did him in: orange flip flops and those Williamsburg-ish sunglasses." Apparently, the event, which was a benefit for breast cancer ended up looking like a Chip n' Dales club whenever the Floot guy was nearby.

DDB London and Tribal DDB have created a real-time live game for the launch of Monopoly's revamped anniversary edition, Monopoly Here and Now. People all over Britain will be able to compete against each other playing Monopoly live on a life-size playing board - the streets of London. The company hopes thousands from all over the country will play this life sized game of Monopoly, with London taxis as their playing pieces, controlled via GPS technology. The live game launched on June 20 and will run for one month.

To play the live game, players register at www.monopolylive.com, choose their piece, represented by a London taxi, and decide where to spend their 15 million capital. Each taxi is Monopoly-branded and fitted with a GPS transmitter, using security technology, so that its location is known at all times.

The taxi drives around London, picking up and dropping off passengers as normal, and the player pays out rent as their cab passes properties they don't own, and receives rent in turn when other cabs pass areas that they do. There are daily and weekly prizes to play for, and the grand prize is winning your mortgage or rent paid for a year.

Sports by Brooks founder Brooks has the perfect life. He's combined sports and hot women into a popular website about sports and, well, hot women. Sports by Brooks also hosts sporting trivia events weekly. This summer, he's on tour, along with the SbB girls and will hit New York tonight at the Overlook Lounge; Boston June 25 at Crossroads Irish Pub and Washington June 28 at Hawk n Dove. Brooks has mastered the art of promoting a business with beautiful women. It's all tastefully, yet tantalizingly done and, if you like women, we guarantee your eyes will pop out of your head and you will drool uncontrollably. OK, well figuratively, at least. Currently, Denise takes our breath away.

Writing on his weblog, "Wouldn't that be ironic? A promotion intended to bring in new customers, actually causes customers to leave," Jodster describes a TD Canada Trust "EasySwitch" promotion that rewards new customers with a free iPod Shuffle. Jodster points out this promotion, like many others, penalizes those who are already customers because they are ineligible for the prize. While these customer base expansion campaigns are common, at times, they can be interpreted as discounting, for no good reason, a person who has been a loyal customer for a long time. Perhaps, marketers in situations like this should consider creating an equally compelling offer for existing customers so they won't leap to the the next best offer that pops up.